California Girl (25 page)

With a solemn expression, Lucia handed over the packet. Alys
flipped quickly through them, handing each to Elliot after she was done with
it. She studied a photo of a dark-haired young woman who bore a family
resemblance to Lucia, but it was taken at an odd angle and didn’t reveal much.

Most of the pictures were obviously taken by a child who
didn’t know how to use the camera well. One seemed to be of a burly man with a
bristling mustache and an unhappy expression, but Lucia had only caught his
torso and the bottom half of his face. Another photo appeared to be the dirty
back end of a semi.

“Nothing in there that will do us any good.” Elliot started
the car engine. “Although that one you took of the pack of thugs on the street
corner is pretty good.”

Maybe she had a talent for photography, but her next career
wasn’t on her mind so much today. She put the picture of the young woman on top
and handed the photos back to Lucia. “Is this your mama?”

Lucia shook her head, and holding that photo in her hand,
tucked the others back into the film envelope. Glad the child had someone she
loved to cling to, Alys faced forward again.

It wasn’t in her to be serious for long. Maybe Fred had
exhausted her worry gene. The sun was shining, Lucia was playing with her new
doll, and Elliot looked like every movie star she’d ever sighed over on the big
screen. She’d never fallen for the pretty ones. She’d always loved the second bananas,
the ones who never got the girl. The handsome ones were too slick and shallow.
The tough ones and the semi-nerdy ones, though, they had character. Let a man
don a pair of glasses, and she was a goner.

Elliot could easily be all of them rolled into one. And she
couldn’t love him. Wouldn’t. Love hurt far too much.

“When we find Mame, will you take her to the hospital in
Albuquerque?” She still hated the idea of hospitals, but she hated worse the
idea of losing a friend.

“I’m not familiar with the facilities in Albuquerque. I know
some specialists working on some experimental techniques in L.A. I may take her
there.” He threw her a swift, unreadable, look. “And myself.”

Alys gulped and nodded. Unable to speak, she reached over
and flipped on the radio, searching for the local news.

* * *

“Is the truck still back there?” Dulce asked, focusing on
the empty highway ahead of them.

“There’s a truck back there. I can’t tell if it’s purple.
The traffic is light, so he’s staying way back, out of our view.”

“Driving through the night was a dangerous decision,” Dulce
said grimly. “What if they’d tried to drive us off the road?”

“I’m assuming Salvador has some sense. If he wants Lucia
home safely, he can’t let his men be too reckless. They’ll probably wait for us
to stop before attempting to snatch Lucia.”

“Oh fine.” Dulce rolled her eyes. “Then we must never stop.
It’s not as if this little road is littered with places to pull over anyway.”

“You’re learning to speak for yourself, excellent,” Mame
said with a weak grin. She hadn’t worked out the pulling over and stopping part
yet. After leaving Lucia with Elliot, they’d driven into a truck stop in hopes
one of Salvador’s drivers would recognize them.

They’d led some poor trucker on a merry chase all night,
driving east as if they were returning to Missouri. They’d taken the first
opportunity to lose their tail, turned around, and careered toward Albuquerque
on the southern route to the reservation.

Somewhere, they’d picked up another tail. Now breakfast and
bladder needed attending.

“Next town, we lose him,” Mame said confidently. “That will
put them into a tizzy.”

Dulce nodded grimly and hit the gas. They were in New Mexico
now, her home turf. She’d already told Mame about her family scattered over the
dirt back roads. It was time to lose this guy.

* * *

Traffic flooding toward Amarillo was heavy, but still on
the light side on the interstate out of town that they traveled. Only a few
semis rumbled along in their lane, and Elliot passed them easily. The morning
sun was behind them. At the speed they were traveling, they’d be in Albuquerque
by noon.

They rode silently with the radio playing a soft violin
concerto that seemed to appeal to Elliot. Alys watched him relax, and she
breathed deeply, trying to find the harmony between them again. If they could
only turn the clock back a day . . .

The panorama through the windshield abruptly changed from
plowed fields to a desert landscape of tumbleweed, yuccas, and mesquite, with
dramatic buttes rising in the distance. Alys exclaimed in excitement—they’d
finally reached the Old West of her imagination.

“There’s a visitor’s center down the road,” she said when
they came within view of the welcome sign at the New Mexico state line. “Why
don’t we pull in there instead of stopping beside the road? We have a long
empty highway ahead. We’d better take advantage of the facilities.” She nodded
toward the backseat.

In apparent agreement, he steered into a line of cars and
trucks taking the exit ramp. The big rigs rolled into their own lot while
Elliot pulled up directly in front of the visitor’s center.

As a reward for not stopping for a picture along the
interstate, the visitor’s center had an even better welcome sign than the one
on the highway. They took turns snapping pictures of each other beneath the big
letters. Lucia tried taking a picture of both Elliot and Alys leaning against
the sign, although Alys figured it would show mostly their legs.

Alys led Lucia to the rest room while Elliot checked their
drink supplies. Noticing several rough-looking men lingering near the women’s side,
Alys held Lucia’s hand tightly and ran over a mental list of defensive moves.
Scratch eyes, knee groin, kick shin, stomp foot, and scream bloody murder
didn’t seem quite so feasible with a five-year-old relying on her. To her
relief, a security guard wandered out, and the men moved on.

She was growing paranoid. Just because someone had broken
into their hotel room didn’t mean every man in sight had evil designs.

When she and Lucia returned to the main room, Elliot was
watching the weather advisory on the television monitor.

“More rain moving in. We’d better get ahead of it while we
can.”

Piling back into the car, checking seat belts and cat and
orchid, perusing the map, Alys didn’t notice Elliot’s taut silence until some
miles down the road. Uncertain of his mood, she watched the traffic, attempting
to discern the reason for the muscle jumping along his cheekbone. A light rain
spattered the windshield, but not to the extent that it leaked through Beulah’s
cracked window.

Traffic had picked up but they were still traveling quickly.
She tried to concentrate on the scenery rather than Elliot’s foot growing
heavier on the gas. He weaved in and out of traffic at a disconcerting speed.
She cast him an anxious glance. Was he feeling ill?

Stomach clenching, Alys stared straight ahead, but she
sensed every nuance of Elliot’s actions. From the corner of her eye she could
see his knuckles whiten on the wheel. She knew him so well she could envision
his jaw tightening and his mouth thinning. In another minute, he would reach
for the antacid in the ashtray.

Instead, he hit the gas again, slipping the Caddy into the
passing lane between two semis. The semi he cut off blew his horn in rage, but
Elliot held his speed until directly in front of a tractor-trailer rig slowing
down to exit. Then he jerked the car back to the right, in front of the exiting
big rig, hit the gas, and flew up the ramp and off the interstate, horns
blaring like curses behind them.

“I don’t want to ask,” Alys whispered, too terrified to
look.

“Don’t.” He whipped the car off the main highway into a
shopping center parking lot, barely slowing until they reached the barren area
between Dumpsters and loading docks in the back.

A pink Cadillac would stick out like an eyesore anywhere in
the civilized world. These flat open spaces looked impossible, but he
maneuvered into a shadow between a tall Dumpster and an empty trailer, then
backed around so the Caddy was invisible to anyone driving by.

They sat silently. No one drove by.

“What did you think you saw?” Alys finally whispered after
Lucia unbuckled her seat belt and climbed over the seat to sit in her lap. The
child buried her face against Alys’s chest and clung.

Her own heart pounded at an uneven rate. Taking comfort in
the child’s warm arms, Alys gathered her closer, trying to be reassuring while
assimilating an assortment of frightening puzzle pieces.

“Maybe I’m crazy,” he muttered, still holding the wheel as
if it might fly off on its own. “But I thought I saw the same semi following us
since just outside Amarillo. I thought we’d lost him at the welcome center, but
it looked like he caught up.”

“Purple cab pulling a produce trailer?” Alys tried to speak
calmly for Lucia’s benefit.

“I couldn’t read what was on the trailer.” Elliot turned to
stare at her. “Where did you see it?”

“When you were in Wal-Mart. It was idling in the parking
lot. I thought I saw it several times along the road and wondered if there were
a lot of trucks like that out here.”

He returned to watching out the windshield. “Maybe there’s a
whole fleet of them, and we’re both paranoid.”

“I agree.” Holding Lucia, feeling her little heart race,
Alys stroked the child’s cheek reassuringly. “We’d better call the police.”

“And say what?” He reached for the cell phone anyway.

“I have no idea. Ask them if there were any purple trucks
outside the motel last night?”

He stared at her, his eyes growing darker. “I heard a semi
idling out there during the break-in, but the lot was full of them.”

“That makes no sense,” she said. “We’ve seen too many horror
movies—‘Monster trucks gone mad’ sort of things. We’ll be looking for giant
ants next.”

“What if it’s Lucia they’re after?” he asked quietly, trying
not to sound too concerned while the child listened. “We didn’t have any
problems until she appeared.”

“You don’t really believe Mame would kidnap a child?” Even
as she asked it, Alys wondered. Mame had definitely been up to something, but
kidnapping? Why?

“I’ll call anyway.” He dialed the operator, connected with
Amarillo police, and handed the phone to Alys. “Ask for one of the officers you
saw last night.”

As if she remembered any of them. Frantically searching her
memory, she recalled the badge of the one who’d stayed with her in the motel
room while they waited for the ambulance. Speaking the name into the receiver,
she waited, and was given to a desk clerk who said the officer wouldn’t be in
until afternoon.

She gave the clerk the little bit of information she
possessed and let Elliot give them his cell phone number and explain about
being followed.

The clerk didn’t sound too interested.

“They probably get anxious calls all the time.” Elliot
clicked off the phone and returned it to its holder. “People get paranoid after
a robbery.”

Alys licked her lips. “I’m paranoid. What do we do now?”

Elliot leaned over and brushed his mouth against hers.
“Breathe.”

His breath feathered across her lips. She tasted orange
juice before he sat up again. He’d just had a heart attack. Or an infarction.
Or something. He ought to be resting. Maybe they should find a hospital instead
of traveling uncertain highways.

“Even if we’re paranoid, maybe we shouldn’t take the open
road?” she suggested, trying to ignore the tingling sensations stirred by
Elliot’s touch.

He lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “There’s some other kind?”

Shifting Lucia to Elliot’s lap, she dug on the floorboard
for the maps. “Route 66 fizzles out and there isn’t much out here.” She opened
the big map. “The directions Mame gave us show the reservation south of
Albuquerque. If there’s any chance the thieves last night are related to Lucia,
they may know where we’re headed. Would changing direction throw them off?”

“Provided there is a ‘they’ and that we’re not crazy?” Elliot
thought about it. “I can’t imagine Lucia being a target, but if she is, I
suppose they might know where we were headed. The interstate is the biggest
road out here and it heads straight to Albuquerque. Is there some way we can
get off this road and circle back without ending up in Colorado or Mexico?”

“Given the state of some of these roads, it might take us
all day, but if this is the Tucumcari exit, then the closest road is the state
road north. It’s a long way around and could take us a while. The easier road
looks like the southern route out of Santa Rosa, but that’s another fifty or
sixty miles down the highway.”

“Does the northern route go through the mountains?”

“I don’t know about mountains. The map is flat. But the
northern road is a black line and not a nice fat red line like the southern
one, so I assume it’s a small road.”

“Let’s see if we’ve lost the guy and go for the safer
southern route.” Switching on the ignition again, he bounced Lucia up and down
on his knee. “Honey bear, you need to climb back into your seat or Purple will
come up here after you. She’s lonely.”

Purple was happily sunning herself in the back window, but
Lucia seriously evaluated Elliot’s expression. Finding reassurance there, she
climbed back over the seat, snapped her seat belt on, and settled in with her
doll again.

Swallowing, Alys clasped her hands in her lap. She didn’t
want to be a family anymore. Every reason why stared her in the face. It hurt
much too much to lose the ones she loved. She’d have to give up both Elliot and
Lucia shortly. It was best to resist loving them.

As if understanding her pain, Elliot reached over to brush a
strand of hair off her cheek. “I’m here. You’re not alone this time.”